An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Apple provided governments around the world with data related to thousands of push notifications sent to its devices, which can identify a target's specific device or in some cases include unencrypted content like the actual text displayed in the notification, according to data published by Apple. In one case, that Apple did not ultimately provide data for, Israel demanded data related to nearly 700 push notifications as part of a single request. The data for the first time puts a concrete figure on how many requests governments around the world are making, and sometimes receiving, for push notification data from Apple. The practice first came to light in 2023 when Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice revealing the practice, which also applied to Google. As the letter said, "the data these two companies receive includes metadata, detailing which app received a notification and when, as well as the phone and associated Apple or Google account to which that notification was intended to be delivered. In certain instances, they also might also receive unencrypted content, which could range from backend directives for the app to the actual text displayed to a user in an app notification." The published data relates to blocks of six month periods, starting in July 2022 to June 2024. Andre Meister from German media outlet Netzpolitik posted a link to the transparency data to Mastodon on Tuesday. Along with the data Apple published the following description: "Push Token requests are based on an Apple Push Notification service token identifier. When users allow a currently installed application to receive notifications, a push token is generated and registered to that developer and device. Push Token requests generally seek identifying details of the Apple Account associated with the device's push token, such as name, physical address and email address."

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New simulations suggest that the long-assumed collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies is not guaranteed, with the odds now estimated at just over 50% within the next 10 billion years. Factoring in other massive galaxies like M33 and the Large Magellanic Cloud revealed that their gravitational influence significantly alters the likelihood of a merger. ScienceAlert reports: The Milky Way and Andromeda are not, however, alone in this little corner of the cosmos. They belong to a small group of galaxies within a radius of about 5 million light-years from the Milky Way known as the Local Group. The Milky Way and Andromeda are the largest members, but there are quite a few other objects hanging out that need to be taken into consideration when modeling the future. [Astrophysicist Till Sawala of the University of Helsinki] and his colleagues took the latest data from the Hubble and Gaia space telescopes, and the most recent mass estimates for the four most massive objects in the Local Group -- the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Then, they set about running simulations of the next 10 billion years, adding and removing galaxies to see how that changed the results. Their results showed that the presence of M33 and LMC dramatically altered the probability of a collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. When it is just the two large spiral galaxies, the merger occurred in slightly less than half the simulation runs. The addition of M33 increased the merger probability to two in three. Taking M33 back out and adding LMC had the opposite effect, decreasing the probability to one in three. When all four galaxies were present, the probability of a merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda within 10 billion years is slightly more than 50 percent. "We find that there are basically two types of outcomes," Sawala said. "The Milky Way and Andromeda will either come close enough on their first encounter (first 'pericenter') that dynamical friction between the two dark matter haloes will drag the orbit to an eventual merger, which very likely happens before 10 billion years, or they do not come close enough, in which case dynamical friction is not effective, and they can still orbit for a very long time thereafter." "The main result of our work is that there is still significant uncertainty about the future evolution -- and eventual fate -- of our galaxy," Sawala added. "Of course, as a working astrophysicist, the best results are those that motivate future studies, and I think our paper provides motivation both for more comprehensive models and for more precise observations." The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

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In December it looked like NASA's next administrator would be the billionaire businessman/space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX. But Saturday the nomination was withdrawn "after a thorough review of prior associations," according to an announcement made on social media. The Guardian reports: His removal from consideration caught many in the space industry by surprise. Trump and the White House did not explain what led to the decision... In [Isaacman's] confirmation hearing in April, he sought to balance Nasa's existing moon-aligned space exploration strategy with pressure to shift the agency's focus on Mars, saying the US can plan for travel to both destinations. As a potential leader of Nasa's 18,000 employees, Isaacman faced a daunting task of implementing that decision to prioritize Mars, given that Nasa has spent years and billions of dollars trying to return its astronauts to the moon... Some scientists saw the nominee change as further destabilizing to Nasa as it faces dramatic budget cuts without a confirmed leader in place to navigate political turbulence between Congress, the White House and the space agency's workforce. "It was unclear whom the administration might tap to replace Isaacman," the article adds, though "One name being floated is the retired US air force Lt Gen Steven Kwast, an early advocate for the creation of the US Space Force..." Ars Technica notes that Kwast, a former Lieutenant General in the U.S. Air Force, has a background that "seems to be far less oriented toward NASA's civil space mission and far more focused on seeing space as a battlefield — decidedly not an arena for cooperation and peaceful exploration."

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BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Microsoft just can't leave well enough alone. The company is now injecting formatting features into Notepad, a program that has long been appreciated for one thing -- its simplicity. You see, starting with version 11.2504.50.0, this update is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels, and it adds bold text, italics, hyperlinks, lists, and even headers. Sadly, this isn't a joke. Notepad is actually being turned into a watered-down word processor, complete with a formatting toolbar and Markdown support. Users can even toggle between styled content and raw Markdown syntax. And while Microsoft is giving you the option to disable formatting or strip it all out, it's clear the direction of the app is changing.

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Apple's upcoming macOS 26 operating system may abandon support for several older Mac models, according to AppleInsider. The casualties will include 2018 MacBook Pro models, the 2020 Intel MacBook Air, the 2017 iMac Pro, and the 2018 Mac mini -- all currently the oldest machines compatible with macOS Sequoia, the report said, citing a source familiar with the matter. The 2019 MacBook Pro models and 2020 5K iMac models will retain compatibility with the new system, codenamed "Cheer," said AppleInsider.

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According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), this year's iOS update won't be called iOS 19. "Instead, Apple is planning to call it 'iOS 26' as part of a new year-based naming strategy," reports 9to5Mac. The new naming scheme will apply to all of Apple's software platforms. From the report: Bloomberg explains that Apple is making this change to "bring consistency to its branding and move away from an approach that can be confusing to customers and developers." The branding alignment comes as Apple is also reportedly planning dramatic redesigns for all of its platforms. The goal seems to be to unify everything both in terms of naming and design.

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Microsoft is testing AI-powered text generation in Notepad for Windows 11 Insiders with Copilot Plus PCs, allowing users to draft content from prompts or build on existing text through a right-click menu. The update also introduces Paint's AI sticker generator and Snipping Tool enhancements including automatic screenshot cropping. The Write feature requires Microsoft account sign-in and uses the same credit system as other Windows 11 AI features.

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Google has launched the NotebookLM app for Android and iOS, offering a native mobile experience with offline support, audio overviews, and integration into the system share sheet for adding sources like PDFs and YouTube videos. 9to5Google reports: This native experience starts on a homepage of your notebooks with filters at the top for Recent, Shared, Title, and Downloaded. The app features a light and dark mode based on your device's system theme with no manual toggle. Each colorful card features the notebook name, emoji, number of sources, and date, as well as a play button for Audio Overviews. There's background playback and offline support for the podcast-style experience (the fullscreen player has a nice glow), while you can "Join" the AI hosts (in beta) to ask follow-up questions. You get a "Create new" button at the bottom of the list to add PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, and text. Notably, the NotebookLM app will appear in the Android and iOS share sheet to quickly add sources. When you open a notebook, there's a bottom bar for the list of Sources, Chat Q&A, and Studio. It's similar to the current mobile website, with the native client letting users ditch the Progressive Web App. Out of the gate, there are phone and (straightforward) tablet interfaces. You can download the app for iOS and Android using their respective links.

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Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, gave an ominous warning today that the iPhone could go the way of the iPod 10 years from now. From a report: Cue's remarks came during the Google Search antitrust remedies trial today while discussing how AI has the potential to reshape the tech industry and open the door to new entrants. Incumbents have a hard time ... we're not an oil company, we're not toothpaste -- these are things that are going to last forever ... you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now. Cue went on to say that the best thing Apple did was kill the iPod, a move he said was bold. "Why would you kill the golden goose," he added. That may seem like a silly thing for Apple to say, given that more than half of its revenue is iPhone sales. But Cue calls AI a "huge technological shift," and suggests that such shifts can humble companies that once seemed unassailable.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple sent notifications this week to several people who the company believes were targeted with government spyware, according to two of the alleged targets. In the past, Apple has sent similar notifications to targets and victims of spyware, and directed them to contact a nonprofit that specializes in investigating such cyberattacks. Other tech companies, like Google and WhatsApp, have in recent years also periodically sent such notifications to their users. As of Wednesday, only two people appear to have come forward to reveal they were among those who received the notifications from Apple this week. One is Ciro Pellegrino, an Italian journalist who works for online news outlet Fanpage. Pellegrino wrote in an article that he received an email and a text message from Apple on Tuesday notifying him that he was targeted with spyware. The message, according to Pellegrino, also said he wasn't the only person targeted. "Today's notification is being sent to affected users in 100 countries," the message read, according to Pellegrino's article. "Did this really happen? Yes, it is not a joke," Pellegrino wrote. The second person to receive an Apple notification is Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch right-wing activist, who posted on X on Wednesday. "Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone," the Apple alert said, according to a screenshot shown in a video that Vlaardingerbroek posted on X. "This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it's never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning -- please take it seriously." Reacting to the notification, Vlaardingerbroek said that this was an "attempt to intimidate me, an attempt to silence me, obviously."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Instead of depressing wages or taking jobs, generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have had almost no wage or labor impact so far -- a finding that calls into question the huge capital expenditures required to create and run AI models. In a working paper released earlier this month, economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard looked at the labor market impact of AI chatbots on 11 occupations, covering 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark in 2023 and 2024. Many of these occupations have been described as being vulnerable to AI: accountants, customer support specialists, financial advisors, HR professionals, IT support specialists, journalists, legal professionals, marketing professionals, office clerks, software developers, and teachers. Yet after Humlum, assistant professor of economics at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, and Vestergaard, a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, analyzed the data, they found the labor and wage impact of chatbots to be minimal. "AI chatbots have had no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation," the authors state in their paper. The report should concern the tech industry, which has hyped AI's economic potential while plowing billions into infrastructure meant to support it. Early this year, OpenAI admitted that it loses money per query even on its most expensive enterprise SKU, while companies like Microsoft and Amazon are starting to pull back on their AI infrastructure spending in light of low business adoption past a few pilots. The problem isn't that workers are avoiding generative AI chatbots -- quite the contrary. But they simply aren't yet equating to actual economic benefits. "The adoption of these chatbots has been remarkably fast," Humlum told The Register. "Most workers in the exposed occupations have now adopted these chatbots. Employers are also shifting gears and actively encouraging it. But then when we look at the economic outcomes, it really has not moved the needle." Humlum said while there are gains and time savings to be had, "there's definitely a question of who they really accrue to. And some of it could be the firms -- we cannot directly look at firm profitability. Some of it could also just be that you save some time on existing tasks, but you're not really able to expand your output and therefore earn more. So it's like it saves you time writing emails. But if you cannot really take on more work or do something else that is really valuable, then that will put a damper on how much we should actually expect those time savings to affect your earning ability, your total hours, your wages." "In terms of economic outcomes, when we're looking at hard metrics -- in the administrative labor market data on earnings, wages -- these tools have really not made a difference so far," said Humlum. "So I think that that puts in some sense an upper bound on what return we should expect from these tools, at least in the short run. My general conclusion is that any story that you want to tell about these tools being very transformative, needs to contend with the fact that at least two years after [the introduction of AI chatbots], they've not made a difference for economic outcomes."

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"A group of researchers says it has identified a hidden reason we use Google for nearly all web searches," reports the Washington Post. "We've never given other options a real shot." Their research experiment suggests that Google is overwhelmingly popular partly because we believe it's the best, whether that's true or not. It's like a preference for your favorite soda. And their research suggested that our mass devotion to googling can be altered with habit-changing techniques, including by bribing people to try search alternatives to see what they are like... [A] group of academics — from Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT — designed a novel experiment to try to figure out what might shake up Google's popularity. They recruited nearly 2,500 participants and remotely monitored their web searches on computers for months. The core of the experiment was paying some participants — most received $10 — to use Bing rather than Google for two weeks. After that period, the money stopped, and the participants had to pick either Bing or Google. The vast majority in the group of people who were paid to use Bing for 14 days chose to go back to Google once the payments stopped, suggesting a strong preference for Google even after trying an alternative. But a healthy number in that group — about 22 percent — chose Bing and were still using it many weeks later. "I realized Bing was not as bad as I thought it was...." one study participant said — which an assistant professor in business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania says is a nice summation of the study's findings. "The researchers did not test other search engines," the article notes. But it also points out that more importantly: the research caught the attention of some government officials: Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D), who is leading the group of states that sued Google alongside the Justice Department, said the research helped inspire a demand by the states to fix Google's search monopoly. They asked a judge to require Google to bankroll a consumer information campaign about web search alternatives, including "short-term incentive payments." On the basis of that, the article suggests "you could soon be paid to try Microsoft Bing or another alternative." And in the meantime, the reporter writes, "I encourage you to join me in a two-week (unpaid) experiment mirroring the research: Change your standard search engine to something other than Google and see whether you like it. (And drop me a line to let me know how it went.) I'm going with DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused web search engine that uses Bing's technology."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider's prices aren't transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the company isn't "winning in the marketplace" during an earnings call today. The Q1 2025 customer loss was over three times larger than the net loss in Q1 2024. While customers often have few viable options for broadband and the availability of alternatives varies widely by location, Comcast faces competition from fiber and fixed wireless ISPs. "In this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of the network and connectivity products that I just described," Cavanagh said. "[Cable division CEO] Dave [Watson] and his team have worked hard to understand the reasons for this disconnect and have identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us. The good news is that both are fixable and we are already underway with execution plans to address these challenges." [...] Cavanagh said that Comcast plans to make changes in marketing and operations "with the highest urgency." This means that "we are simplifying our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments," he said. Comcast last week announced a five-year price guarantee for broadband customers who sign up for a new package. Comcast said customers will get a "simple monthly price starting as low as $55 per month," without having to enter a contract, giving them "freedom and flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty." The five-year guarantee also comes with one year of Xfinity Mobile at no charge, Comcast said. [...] Additional offers are in the works, Cavanagh said. "We are not done. Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months," he said. Comcast investors shouldn't expect an immediate turnaround, though. "We anticipate that it will take several quarters for our new approach to gain traction and impact the business in a meaningful way," Cavanagh said.

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There was excitement when biotech company Collosal announced genetically modified grey wolves (first hailed as a "de-extinction" of the Dire wolf species after several millennia). "But bioethicists and conservationists are expressing unease with the kind of scientific research," writes the Chicago Tribune. [Alternate URL here.] "Unfortunately, as clever as this science is ... it's can-do science and not should-do science," said Lindsay Marshall, director of science in animal research at Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the U.S.... Ed Heist, a professor at Southern Illinois University and a conservation geneticist, said the news bothered him. "This is not conservation, but people conflate it," he said. "The point is entertainment...." Naomi Louchouarn [program director of wildlife partnerships at Humane World for Animals], has dedicated her studies and research to the relationship between humans and animals, specifically carnivores like gray wolves. "The reason our current endangered species are becoming extinct is because we don't know how to coexist with them," she said. "And this doesn't solve that problem at all." Humans can treat the symptoms of wildlife conflict with "big, flashy silver bullets" and "in this case, advanced, inefficient science," she said, but the real solution is behavioral change. "Assuming that we could actually bring back a full population of animals," Louchouarn said, "which is so difficult and so crazy — that's a big if — I don't understand the point of trying to bring back a woolly mammoth when we already can't coexist with elephants." The article notes that even Colossal's chief science officer says their technology is at best one of several tools for fighting biodiversity loss, calling it a battle which humans are 'not close to winning'... We as a global community need to continue to invest in traditional approaches to conservation and habitat preservation, as well as in the protection of living endangered species." But the article adds that the Trump administration "is citing the case of the dire wolf as it moves to reduce federal protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973." (Wednesday U.S. interior secretary Doug Burgum has even posted on X "The concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.") And the article adds that "During a livestreamed town hall with Interior Department employees on April 9, Burgum said: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal. Ken Angielczyk, curator of mammal fossils at the Field Museum who researches extinct species that lived 200 to 300 million years ago, said it's a misguided approach. "If that's the basis ... for changing regulations related to the endangered species list, that is very, very premature," he said. "Because we can't resurrect things.... If the purpose is to restore the damage to the shared ecosystem, we have that opportunity right now," she said. "And that's the necessity immediately...." "This whole idea that extinction is reversible is so dangerous," Marshall said, "because then it stops us caring." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd for sharing the news.

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Discover magazine reports that a team of researchers have produced evidence that the ancient building blocks for water have been here on earth "since early in the planet's history, according to a study published in the journal Icarus." Pinpointing when and where Earth's hydrogen [originated] is an essential key to understanding how life arose on the planet. Without hydrogen, there's no water, and without water, life can't exist here. Ironically, researchers turned to a meteorite containing hydrogen to prove that such former bodies did not provide the H2 ingredient of water's H2O recipe. They examined a rare type of meteorite — known as an enstatite chondrite — that was built similarly to early Earth 4.5 billion years ago and the team discovered hydrogen present in the chemical. The logic is that if this material resembling early Earth's composition can contain hydrogen, so too could the young planet.... Since the proto-Earth was made of material similar to enstatite chondrites, by the time the immature planet had grown large enough to be struck by asteroids, it would have already stashed enough hydrogen to explain Earth's present-day water supply.Although this study likely won't resolve the debate over Earth's original water source, it tilts the ta ble toward an internal, not external one. "We now think that the material that built our planet — which we can study using these rare meteorites — was far richer in hydrogen than we thought previously," James Bryson, an Oxford professor and an author of the paper, said in a press release. "This finding supports the idea that the formation of water on Earth was a natural process, rather than a fluke of hydrated asteroids bombarding our planet after it formed."

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In a recent interview with Wired, Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan discusses his book Why We Die, in which he argues that death is not genetically programmed but rather a consequence of evolution favoring reproduction over longevity. Here are some of the most thought-provoking excerpts: WIRED: Professor Ramakrishnan, the crucial question in your book is why we die. But exactly what is death? Venki Ramakrishnan: By death, we mean the irreversible loss of the ability to function as a coherent individual. It is the result of the failure of a critical system or apparatus, for example, heart, brain, lung, or kidney failure. In this sense there is an apparent paradox: When our organism, as a whole, is alive, millions of cells within us are constantly dying, and we do not even realize it. On the other hand, at the time of death, most of the cells in our bodies are still alive, and entire organs are still functioning and can be donated to people in need of transplantation. But at that point the body has lost the ability to function as a whole. In this sense, it is therefore important to distinguish between cell death and death of the individual. Speaking of death and aging, you say in your most recent book that you "wanted to offer an objective look at our current understanding of the two phenomena." What was the biggest surprise or most deeply held belief that you had to reconsider while writing and researching this work? There have been several surprises, actually. One is that death, contrary to what one might think, is not programmed by our genes. Evolution does not care how long we live, but merely selects the ability to pass on our genes, a process known as "fitness" in evolutionary biology. Thus, the traits that are selected are those that help us survive childhood and reproduce. And it is these traits, later in life, that cause aging and decline. Another curious finding was the fact that aging is not simply due to wear and tear on cells. Wear and tear happens constantly in all living things, yet different species have very different lifespans. Instead, lifespan is the result of a balance between the expenditure of resources needed to keep the organism functioning and repairing it and those needed to make it grow, mature, and keep it healthy until it reproduces and nurtures offspring. Do you think there is an aspect of the biology of aging that is still deeply misunderstood by the general public? Certainly the indefinite extension of life. Although in principle there are no laws or constraints that prevent us from living much longer than we do currently, great longevity or "eternal youth" are still far off, and very significant obstacles to increasing our maximum life expectancy remain. We must also beware of the pseudoscience -- and business -- around the concepts of "anti-aging" or the "reversal of aging." These are often baseless concepts, unsupported by hard evidence, even though they may use language that sounds scientific. Unfortunately, we are all afraid of growing old and dying, so we are very sensitive to any claim that promises to help us avoid it. [...] What do you think are the social and ethical implications of our desire to live longer? Ever since we became aware of our mortality, we have desired to defeat aging and death. However, our individual desires may conflict with what is best for society. A society in which fertility rates are very low and lifespans are very high will be a stagnant society, with very slow generational turnover, and probably much less dynamic and creative. The Nobel Prize-winning South American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who recently passed away, expressed it best: "Old age on the one hand terrifies us, but when we feel anxious, it is important to remember how terrible it would be to live forever. If eternity were guaranteed, all the incentives and illusions of life would vanish. This thought can help us live old age in a better way."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: British laws restricting what the police can say about criminal cases are "not fit for the social media age (source paywalled; alternative source)," a government committee said in a report released Monday in Britain that highlighted how unchecked misinformation stoked riots last summer. Violent disorder, fueled by the far right, affected several towns and cities for days after a teenager killed three girls on July 29 at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. In the hours after the stabbings, false claims that the attacker was an undocumented Muslim immigrant spread rapidly online. In a report looking into the riots, a parliamentary committee said a lack of information from the authorities after the attack "created a vacuum where misinformation was able to grow." The report blamed decades-old British laws, aimed at preventing jury bias, that stopped the police from correcting false claims. By the time the police announced the suspect was British-born, those false claims had reached millions. The Home Affairs Committee, which brings together lawmakers from across the political spectrum, published its report after questioning police chiefs, government officials and emergency workers over four months of hearings. Axel Rudakubana, who was sentenced to life in prison for the attack, was born and raised in Britain by a Christian family from Rwanda. A judge later found there was no evidence he was driven by a single political or religious ideology, but was obsessed with violence. [...] The committee's report acknowledged that it was impossible to determine "whether the disorder could have been prevented had more information been published." But it concluded that the lack of information after the stabbing "created a vacuum where misinformation was able to grow, further undermining public confidence," and that the law on contempt was not "fit for the social media age."

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Colossal Biosciences has claimed it "successfully restored" the extinct dire wolf after a "10,000+ year absence," but scientists clarify these are actually genetically modified grey wolves. The U.S. company announced three pups -- males Remus and Romulus born in October, and female Khaleesi born in January -- as dire wolves, but made only 20 genetic edits to grey wolves. Beth Shapiro of Colossal told New Scientist that just 15 modifications were based on dire wolf DNA, primarily targeting size, musculature and ear shape. Five other changes involve mutations known to produce light coats in grey wolves. A 2021 DNA study revealed dire wolves and grey wolves last shared a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, with jackals and African wild dogs more closely related to grey wolves.

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Google's NotebookLM has added a new "Discover sources" feature that allows users to describe a topic and have the AI find and curate relevant sources from the web -- eliminating the need to upload documents manually. "When you tap the Discover button in NotebookLM, you can describe the topic you're interested in, and NotebookLM will bring back a curated collection of relevant sources from the web," says Google software engineer Adam Bignell. Click to add those sources to your notebook; "it's a fast and easy way to quickly grasp a new concept or gather essential reading on a topic." PCMag reports: You can still add your files. NotebookLM can ingest PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, or Google Slides and summarize, transcribe, narrate, or convert into FAQs and study guides. "Discover sources" helps incorporate information you may not have saved. [...] The imported sources stay within the notebook you created. You can read the entire original document, ask questions about it via chat, or apply other NotebookLM features to it. Google started rolling out both features on Wednesday. It should be available for all users in about "a week or so." For those concerned about privacy, Google says, "NotebookLM does not use your personal data, including your source uploads, queries, and the responses from the model for training." There's also an "I'm Feeling Curious" button (a reference to its iconic "I'm feeling lucky" search button) that generates sources on a random topic you might find interesting.

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Air conditioning will contribute more to rising global energy demand than data centers through 2030, according to an International Energy Agency. While attention has focused on computing power consumption, the IEA projects data centers will account for less than 10% of increased energy demand by 2030, significantly less than space cooling requirements. Global cooling degree days, a measure of air conditioning need, were 6% higher in 2024 than 2023 and 20% above the long-term average for the first two decades of the century. China, India and the United States saw particularly sharp increases. Air conditioning represented 7% of global electricity consumption in 2022, with some U.S. regions reporting that cooling can comprise over 70% of residential energy use during peak periods. The number of air conditioning units worldwide could nearly triple from fewer than 2 billion in 2016 to approximately 6 billion by 2050, creating a growing challenge for power grids.

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